Biz Tips: How to Use Clickbait Effectively, Genuinely and not like a Dick.

February 19, 2019

GROWTH:

How to Use Clickbait Effectively, Genuinely and not like a Dick.

Let’s be genuine again.

So, I’ve never actually read a headline like that but it’s not too far from some that I, unfortunately, have the pleasure of scrolling by, no matter what platform I’m on.

I would put a lot of money on the guess that exit rates have increased widely in the past 10 years online and I don’t think I’d attribute it to the commonly said fact that we now all have lower attention spans.

Although that’s probably very true.

I think its primarily due to the fact that a lot of the content produced online is chock-full of uninformative, time wasting, fluff content trying to get your email to sell you the secret to getting 6 inches off your waist while eating 6000 calories of the best foods every day.

Like I don’t think I could afford 6000 calories a day, so I’ll pass thanks though.

I hate clickbait, to a degree. I think it’s brilliant and a form of art for those that can do it correctly. I think if there was one person at every content agency specializing in headlines that are “genuine clickbait” (a phrase I’ll come back to later) would triple their revenue.

And I don’t say this lightly. Clickbait is everywhere now and it almost feels sometimes you need to have a click centric title to just get people to lay their eyes on your website. Some I believe don’t care about lying to their eventual audience and just want as many sets of eyes as possible out of hopes that the more numbers they have the higher chance they’ll have of some converting. I think others get frustrated due to the fact that those guys are getting all the eyes and they’re stuck on the bleachers looking at their hard work go to waste.

But here’s how you could do it effectively.

Write a basic headline that isn’t clickbaity whats so ever.

Rewrite it. Rewrite it in different ways, don’t embellish, just rewrite it to add some flair, to make it sound catchier.

Write a completely CLICKBAIT article headline. Write one like the ones I referenced earlier. Then find what isn’t completely embellished in that headline and see if you could work it into a normal headline. Or simply ask yourself “how could I make this absolute atrocity of a title more genuine?”

Rewrite your headline some more, don’t even think of it to any respect that could be regarded as overthinking, just write.

Look at your favorites and think “which would get my audience clicking the best”

These are just some tips to writing better headlines in my opinion. I think the best method would to write more than one, you may already do this, but you may just pick one at the start that you like and not think to try some more demo titles out on a different word document or a scrap piece of paper, you may find one you love more.

The chances are, clickbait will get you views, it could. But, do you want it too. I have articles with more eye-catching titles but I wouldn’t say any of mine have content that doesn’t relate to the title.

And yours shouldn’t either.

People may come for the eye-catching titles but they don’t stay for awful content. Awful content doesn’t get shared the same way genuine content does. So when writing “Clickbait” just think “Catching and Genuine” and that mental thought switch may just be the thing that adds a little more flair to your headlines, cause really, that’s all genuine clickbait is.